A poem I wrote...after a prolonged hiatus...

MEMORIAL

Did I think you were the answer to all my sorrows ?

I do.

Did I think you were the messiah of my tomorrows ?

I do. I do. I do.

I cradle you to the cross of my soul

A baby never to be.

My dreams beckon you into my sight

A river never to swim to sea.

And yet, despite you, I spite you

Because you were never my chosen.

I dare not wish for wisps of you

I myself have burnt and broken.

Will you ?

There are tears, there are fears

Bitter, battered years

As I mourn my own dead.

And yet I walk, how yet I talk

Scanning a senseless yoke

Legacy of a vampire undead.

Do you ?

Your touch is almost on my arm

A weapon of pain I cannot disarm

Your voice a tune I clutch in my palm

Your ghost the secret of my psalm.

And yet, before you ask me,

I must one day unmask me

And tell you the truth :

I do.

Love All

I've often wondered why people bother to hate when they can have an easier way out : love. I know Gandhiji isn't around any more and it's easier to preach than to practise in todays' world but I've tried in my own way to believe in the force of love. A positive emotion is always easier to act on than a negative one, I've found. And no one's asking you to forget after all, just to forgive and move on.

But I find it increasingly hard to nurture this streak of benevolence within me. When words become weapons and someone else's weakness your strength, then the very axis of your mental sphere collapses. The hurt, the bitterness, the resentment become so overwhelming a lump that there is a sense of agony that is almost physical. Your self-esteem takes a nosedive, your confidence suffers a blow and your darkest side comes to the fore. All that is repressed in the unconsciousness then returns with a vengeance.

How can I then love ? I have no love with which to defeat the hate in me.

But as James Baldwin says, "I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain."

So I shall love again. Come what may.

And yes, let us consider what Somerset Maugham says : "We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person. "

Makes sense, methinks.

What about you ?

Paradise Lost

Last night, I dreamed of someone I had loved and lost. Someone who my near-thirty years of innocence and desire had slowly, steadily moulded into life... and then, destroyed. Someone who was the climax of my older, younger ardour, the crystallisation of my spartan, monotheist faith. Someone who I dreamed into life, lived into religion, religiously summoned from the sphere of souls to love, cherish and protect. Someone who made me want to believe in the existence of a being who answers your prayers, provided there is enough power and patience in them.

That someone is no more. One day, I woke up and he had disappeared. He had died, I think.

With him, had died all the love I had breathed , so much of it that it had made me wonder.

With him had died all my elations and my illusions.

With his death, I now know how to feel when you love and lose. But better that than never having loved at all.

It's only that enlightenment has come at a cost : I'm alone with myself again. And the dreams are no more.

But yes, I now know that that being is there.

Be careful who you wish for. It might just be answered.

For the real slumdogs

FLOWER OF THE SLUM

Give it just a little love
Even if it’s all
You have
Every day at dawn,
Each night forlorn,
Some grey,
Some bright,
Meet offerings of critique or spite
With an even gentle sunnier smile
And let it sleep a longer while
Allow it the taste of sweet respite.

And love it just a little more
This soul that seeks
Soft succour.
It’s wandering,
Mud meandering
It’s learning to walk,
Trembling and tottering,
Support its unsteady steps
From embracing the cold floor.
It’s wondering,
Vaguely blundering,
Grant it some credit
To reach desire’s door;
It needs a guide
It needs a family
Throw it some anchor
To safely shore.

Let every slumdog
Grasp at one fair chance
Wreck it not
Into doomed defiance.
For every Twist,
One loving glance
May work miracles
To treat its
Malnourished trance.
For every Apu,
Orphaned so young,
A gentler glance
Might glean romance.
For every Jude
Who speaks so rude
Our prayer might redeem
Foul mischance.


We who may torture it to tears
We who may fan its furtive fears
We who steal its childhood joys
We, who’d willingly die for our own boys :


Let’s coax out
the best
In a being
So small
Whom our careless barbs
Could weedy wounds befall
Let us not crush it
Beneath that wanton wall


Of indifference


Basking in the sunshine
Towering above all
Let it bloom
Beautiful
A credit to us all.

GARGI MANDAL-MUKHERJEE

08-04-2009

Fwd : Love's Labour's Found

During a seminar, a woman asked," How do I know if I am with the right person?" the author then noticed that there was a large man sitting next to her so he said, "It depends. Is that your partner?" In all seriousness, she answered "How do you know?" Let me answer this question because the chancesare good that it's weighing on your mind replied the author. Here's the answer.

Every relationship has a cycle...in the beginning ; you fall in love withyour partner. You anticipate their calls, want their touch, and like their idiosyncrasies. Falling in love wasn't hard. In fact, it was a completely natural and spontaneous experience. You didn't have to DO anything. That's why it's called "falling" in love.

People in love sometimes say, "I was swept off my feet." Picture the expression. It implies that you were just standing there; doing nothing,and then something happened TO YOU. Falling in love is a passive and spontaneous experience. But after a few months or years of being together, the euphoria of love fades. It's a natural cycle of EVERY relationship. Slowly but surely, phone calls become a bother (if they come at all), touchis not always welcome (when it happens), and your spouse's idiosyncrasies, instead of being cute, drive you nuts. The symptoms of this stage vary with every relationship; you will notice a dramatic difference between the initial stage when you were in love and a much duller or even angry subsequent stage. At this point, you and/or your partner might start asking, "Am I with the right person?" And as you reflect on the euphoria of the love you once had, you may begin to desire that experience with someone else. This is when relationships breakdown.

The key to succeeding in a relationship is not finding the right person; it's learning to love the person you found.

People blame their partners for their unhappiness and look outside for fulfilment. Extramarital fulfilment comes in all shapes and sizes. Infidelity is the most common. But sometimes people turn to work, a hobby,a friendship, excessive TV, or abusive substances. But the answer to this dilemma does NOT lie outside your relationship. It lies within it. I'm not saying that you couldn't fall in love with someone else. You could. And TEMPORARILY you'd feel better. But you'd be in the same situation a fewyears later. Because (listen carefully to this):
The key to succeeding in arelationship is not finding the right person; it's learning to love theperson you found.

SUSTAINING love is not a passive or spontaneous experience. You have to work on it day in and day out. It takes time, effort, and energy. And most importantly, it demands WISDOM. You have to know WHAT TO DO to make it work. Make no mistake about it. Love is NOT a mystery. There are specific things you can do (with or without your partner). Just as there are physical laws of the universe (such as gravity), there are also laws for relationships. If you know and apply these laws, the results are predictable. Love is therefore a "decision". Not just a feeling.

Remember this always: God determines who walks into your life. It is up to you to decide who you let walk away, who you let stay, and who you refuse to let GO!!

Thank you for this e-forward, Priyanka...I owe you one.

V-Day etcetera

I'm still to recover from the surprise gift showers on our Registry Anniversary and V-Day...I just have to admit it : K took me totally by surprise !


Registry Anniversary gift (leather-suede tote bag):


V-Day gifts (Russell Stover chocolates, perfume, hairbrush) :

Although poor K had to go to office on V-Day, we made up for it with a sumptuous dinner at Shalimar, Edison (biriyani and the works), along with Madhav & Shilpa...

That reminds me, the mithai counter at Shalimar was a visual delight. Check it out :

Shilpa and I drooled over the confectionery almost to the extent the boys did over the goat curry !

Rabindrasangeet

When we want to have a quiet and cosy evening together, sit back and basically just feel relaxed and refreshed, K and I instinctively reach out to the Rabindrasangeet available online. Quite a few are available on YouTube, mostly sourced from old and recent Bengali films and telefilms or private albums by professional singers but sadly enough, too few to pick and choose from. Once I spent some time searching for a few of my favourite Tagore compositions online and was appalled at the limited number of websites that showed up on Google. That made me ponder. I would have thought that I'd be spoilt for choice as it usually happens when I'm googling anything else on that omnipotent search engine. I have to waste a whole lot of time just making random hits and hoping I'll find something that approximates my target. Rabindrasangeet alas seems to be a rarity of sorts online. And yet, folks back home tell me that there's been a boom in the e-media of late.

Anyway, all this means that we lament our not having foresight enough to carry some Rabindrasangeet CDs with us to the USA. Both of us are to blame, since music forms a very notable part of our everyday lives. Our tastes are markedly different when it comes to English music, where I'm notoriously fickle, moving from Tchaikovsky to Enrique to Dido to Philip Yon to the Beatles in one clean sweep, leaving K breathless in his effort to keep up with my tastes. He is more into multi-genre rock and Pink Floyd. However, we manage to embrace considerable similarity when it comes to Bengali and Hindi music, where we are both heavily into anything Kishore or A.R.Rahman, Sonu Nigam or Debabrata Biswas, Lata or Asha, Shreya Ghoshal or Sraboni Sen. And Rabindrasangeet is like our refuge. When we want comfort and cheer, trust us to curl up on our cushions with Rabindrasangeet and coffee (er well, tea for K).

It's startling, the effect Rabindrasangeet has on us. The long drawn out enunciation most professional singers sport is soothing, almost as slurred at points as it would take a teetotaller after a couple of pegs to come up with or even me, when the mercury drops sharply to minus 10 and below. We laugh at the drawling and affected accents when we are in the mood for jest and banter, but when you're far from home like us and sometimes, just nothing seems to work except perhaps tears (easy for me, tough for K) or deep sleep (escape from reality itself), Rabindrasangeet provides unimaginable relief. Just musing on the words, brooding on their meaning can lift you effortlessly to a plane of pure pleasure, when each nerve thrills to the melody and the spirit yearns to become one with the flesh.

I personally think my greatest influence in writing poetry has been Rabindranath. The blending of love and worship, pain and pleasure, word and meaning, wisdom and worth...why else would I learn to write each word as if I felt it walk my heart each step, arriving at a climax as one would stand ecstatic at the door of heaven, straining to reach for a few drops of peace from what little 'punyo' (godliness) I have gained from striving to please others on each day, in each poem.

Before I leave...

Yesterday we completed watching the last instalment of Dasvidaniya. I have been thinking ever since about my wish list. So many things that I should have to do in order to settle my accounts in case I need to leave before time. I certainly won't be able to limit my list to a mere 10 things, unlike Amar Kaul. So many debts to own up to, so many apologies to acknowledge, so many moments to rewind to and re-create. To learn Spanish. To learn salsa. To publish an anthology. To become a Rabindrasangeet singer. To complete reading the entire Agatha Christie collection. To have a child of my own. To resolve my parents' conflicts forever. To listen to all the secret sorrows Mitu (my sibling) has been piling up against the world and would only care to share with me. To take my mother on a long holiday to some beach. To confess to Baba the tears I've secretly shed every time I've argued with him. To tell Brinda, Sanjukta, Sohini, Sharmistha, Shobhana, Indranil, Rashi, Pooja, Tua, Ayantika, Shonali, Swarnadeep, Nilanjana, Debarati, Barnali and Moumita how they have all somehow contributed to making me a better person. To tell Bubun/Angshuman (my cousin) what a difference his mere presence or absence can make in my life. To tell K what he means to me. To just let life know how much I enjoyed the warmth of its embrace.

I think I'd better get down to it before it's too late.

For K

It's a very dreary sort of rainy day today...plus that time of the month when being a woman doesn't seem a very pleasant thing after all. But it's better than yesterday, when dysmenorrhoea pained the hell out of me. I was in no state to do anything productive, K rushed back home early and dinner consisted of a marvellous khichuri that my poor K had to prepare and I must say did a commendable job of. Anyway, to cheer myself up, being all alone with my thoughts today, I've been recalling bits and pieces of the past through songs and poetry. And came across this jewel from Neruda.

If You Forget Me

I want you to know one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

If you, like me, just cannot have enough of Neruda, try this link :

http://www.poemhunter.com/pablo-neruda/

P.S. I know you know it all, but I feel like telling you, all over again.

After a horrifyingly long hiatus..

DEATH

Leave me no more room to love
Let you be all that I must ever have
As material to live with you on and on
Stumbling in the depths of the mind horizon
Gathering shelter in the memory of your charms
Seeking sustenance in the warmth of your arms
Knowing that we shall never belong
To others, to existences shadowy lifelong…

Since you are gone, never to appear before eyes
And these days must seem like dark nightmare lies
My cries bewilder those that haunt the earth
Who beguile me to more marriage and mirth
Trusting in tragic time to forget and heal
Mocking the power of the wedding seal,
The flaming red that knows you live on in me
That we always believed in what is destiny…

If there are no smiles, it is because I laugh
Glowing in the halo of my once better half
If there is no music, it is your echoing voice
That leaves me enough cause to rejoice,
Ringing in my ears, singing out my woe
Easing the course of the tears that flow…

Battling the burden of the rest of my role
Dancing lightly in the locus of the soul
Rendering moments, monuments, emotions whole
Filling up what morbid dust might expose a hole.


GARGI MANDAL-MUKHERJEE
25-09-2008

REFLECTING ON 'MR & MRS IYER'...AN OLD ARTICLE

MUCH ADO ABOUT MARRIAGE

All marriages do not start off with love as the unifying bond. One of the many banes of a traditionally inclined Indian mindset is the notion of arranged marriages. However, Indian women, being one of the most malleable of the female species on earth, adapt. Until, like the unfortunate Meenakshi, a stranger sweeps them off their feet. And they live on, resigned to the reality of their essential predicament. That marriage itself is a convenience for everybody except the two most closely concerned with it. That to satisfy everyone, one must brutally dissatisfy oneself. It is this moment of realization that the film ‘Mr & Mrs Iyer’ arrests with a crystal clear epiphany.

“What does your husband do?’ Raja casually asks. “Why, don’t you know? He’s a wildlife photographer !” is Meenakshi’s retort. It is meant to sound like a joke and both laugh dutifully. It is a joke that also underscores subtly the peculiar nameless bond between them. The husband is, in social parlance, the man the wife is supposed to love. In this exception, one of many perhaps, the man Meenakshi falls in love with poses as her husband at a critical point in the narrative. The irony is only too evident. Raja, in an oddly reflective tone, observes, “In general, the husband gives his name to the wife. Here, a wife is giving her name to the husband !” Curious indeed. But on further contemplation, perhaps it is not so surprising, after all. In a moment of crisis, assuming the name of ‘Mr Iyer’ saves Raja’s life. The ‘Mr’ and ‘Mrs’ are social tags. One needn’t necessarily identify them as integral to one’s basic identity in a relationship. After all, we love a person and not a mere name. ‘Mr Iyer’ thus comes to represent to an objective onlooker the man Mrs Iyer might have loved, had she been allowed to make her own choices in life. The man with whom she might have spent beautiful moments of her life. In a tree house. In a guest house tucked away somewhere in the unchartered depths of a forest. On a moonlit night. In darkness, with only their quiet breathing for company. In moments of self exploration.

The past, however, cannot be blotted out. Neither can an uncertain future hold out of a promise of happiness. Thus, the only compensation one can effect is by living in and for the present, with the past for occasional stoic company.

If this interested you, you might not mind having a look at a rather well-penned contemporary review of the film...

http://hinduism.about.com/library/weekly/aa040103a.htm

Open Letter to K

Every time we meet, the first question that occurs to me is why, on such a short acquaintance, it seems that I have known you all my life. That you are much more familiar to me that I myself am and definitely dearer. There are points of time when I hate certain aspects of myself and wish to escape from them. But I care so much for you that even when I’m disappointed with you, hurt or angry at something you unintentionally said or did, (for I know you would never hurt a fly, you who are so gentle, kind and sympathetic to one and all), I am divided against myself, one part of me always ready to defend you against the other me who has, in a momentary lapse, put ego above love. You are my greatest strength, my biggest weakness. If you ever think you’ve found someone who cares for you more than I do, believe me, I shall give you up that very day to that lady without a word, a question, a tear. Not because I believe in feminism or martyrdom but simply because if my love means nothing to you at any point of time, what am I to do with the legal rights that marriage should endow me with? Believe me, darling, I love you too much to ever force you to love me.

Reassessment...

SOJOURN

Let me be a guest
In your inn
For these few hours.
But do not beg me,
I beg you,
To spend the night…

Do not put me to test.
It is not yet
The time to stop,
The season to stay,
To carry over these dreams
Into another stale day…

I still need
To sense my way,
To salvage
All that I have left
In dense disarray…

Maybe I will return
Some distant day,
No more the prodigal,
Never again to stray…

Maybe you will remain,
A wistful figure,
Waiting at the window,
So much to say…
And even more eager
To listen
To
My silence


When I finally come back
To you,
To home,
To rest.